Frequently Asked Questions

Who is the Texas Entrepreneur Network (TEN)?

TEN is a funding portal that helps Texas entrepreneurs and communities raise funding by showcasing their offering to prospective investors including angels, venture capital, lenders, and more.

What type of funding can I raise on your platform?

We offer equity, revenue-based funding, and debt raises. We can help companies prepare and rewards, donations, and other campaigns as well.

What do you offer?

We help you prepare your company, investor documents and the campaign for fund raising. The TEN Funding Program focuses on the campaign planning and accredited investor engagement. After you signup, we provide you a campaign planner package which includes everything you need to build out your documents for investors (executive summary, pitch deck, 5 year financials, and pitch video) and your campaign mailers (what you’re going to tell investors at each step along the way). You can use these campaign documents and tools on any crowdfunding portal or with any investor group. If appropriate we may suggest going through the angel networks and venture capital groups. We can guide you on how their process works.

How does it work?

The first step is to fill out the application form under the “Startup Registration” if you haven’t done so already. We’ll follow up with you to discuss your fundraise.
If you want to join the program we’ll send you a signup mailer. After signup we’ll send you the campaign planner package so you can start work on your business preparation, investor documents, and campaign. Along the way we’ll guide you through the process.
After you complete the investor and campaign documents, we’ll review it and give some guidance on how to polish it for the investor. If you need help with any of the documents such as the Five year financial projections, we have team members who can help although this may come at an additional charge.

When the investor and campaign documents are complete we post it on the TEN site and send it out to the investors. Investors who express interest in your deal will be added to an investor prospect list. If you have investor prospects of your own we recommend adding them to this list.

We then send your campaign mailer updates (typically monthly) showcasing your progress and educating the investors about your deal. The goal is to build up a list of 50 investor prospects or more. Along the way, you may reach out to the investor prospects and offer to meet for a coffee or a conference call to answer any questions they have.

What will I get?

By joining the program, you’ll receive the campaign planner package which includes templates for investor documents, campaign mailers, and pitch video scripts. You’ll also receive access to the accredited investors through the funding portal.

What do I pay?

We charge a monthly subscription fee throughout the program. There’s no contract to sign and is on a month-to-month basis. You may cancel at any time but please do so in writing. There are no back-end fees. We offer additional services to help with your business (financials preparation, sales, marketing, accounting, bookkeeping, etc) at an additional cost.

How long does it take to raise funding?

The time it takes to raise funding varies greatly. We’ve had companies receive funding after one week and some that take more than a year. The factors determining the fund raise timeframe include: how complete your business is (market validation, team and sales are key criteria), how well you run prepare your documents and run your campaign, and how well you follow up investor prospects.

What is your success rate?

Currently, one out of three participants who go through the full program receive funding.

What kind of funding can you help raise?

TEN can help you raise equity, revenue-based funding, debt, and more. We primarily focus on equity and revenue-based funding raises but can also help you find other types of funding.

How many investors are on the database?

We have over 17,000 accredited investors in the database and it grows daily. Most of these investors are based in Texas so there’s an opportunity to reach out and meet with those who express interest in your deal.

What is the average amount raised?

Most of the deals on the TEN Funding portal are raising $250K to $2M. The average raise is around $750K.

How do you comply with the SEC rules around general solicitation?

We send equity deals only to accredited investors. Our investors have self-verified as accredited investors.

Resources

TEN is a software as a service crowdfunding platform and is not a registered broker-dealer and does not offer investment advice or advise on the raising of capital through securities offerings. TEN does not recommend or otherwise suggest that any investor make an investment in a specific company, or that any company offer securities to a particular investor. TEN takes no part in the negotiation or execution of transactions for the purchse or sale of securities, and at no time as possession of funds or securities. No securities transactions are executed or negotiated on or through the TEN platform. TEN receives no compensation in connection with the purchase or sale of securities. Copyright TEN 2014, All rights reserved.